


The Best Medicine

by mel_tokio



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mel_tokio/pseuds/mel_tokio
Summary: Nothing can heal Lloyd's wounds like Colette's presence.
Relationships: Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving
Kudos: 3





	The Best Medicine

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr for Colloyd Week 2019. Reposted here with minor edits.

_ Knock, knock. _

“Lloyd, the doctor said it was okay for me to come in now. Do you mind?”

Lloyd leaned back into his pillow and pulled the bed sheet up to his chin. After several minutes of ice and elevation, his ankle was mostly numb, but the bruises to his ego were still fresh.

When some Sybak university students had invited him and Colette to test out a new invention of theirs, a game they called ‘laser tag,’ they’d jumped at the opportunity and ended up having even more fun with it than they’d anticipated they would…until Lloyd started to take the game a little _ too _ seriously and ended up injuring himself like a total loser, landing himself back in his room at the inn with a local doctor making a house call to officially diagnose him with a sprained ankle.

He took a deep breath. He knew Colette was worried, which honestly made the whole situation even more embarrassing, but he’d have to face her eventually.

“Yeah, sure. Come on in.”

The door squeaked open and Colette entered the room, brows furrowed in concern. She pulled a nearby desk chair next to the bed and sat down beside Lloyd, starting to reach to put a hand on his shoulder, but pulling back at the last second, apparently too hesitant to touch him in his fragile state.

He leaned back further, wishing he could sink all the way into the mattress and completely disappear for the next few days.

“Go ahead and say it: I’m an idiot.”

She balled her hands into fists.

“I wasn’t going to say that!”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Really?”

Well…” She unclenched her fists and rested them on her knees. “Not quite in those words.” She leaned forward. “But you really do need to take better care of yourself!”

“Says the person who always puts others before herself,” Lloyd retorted.

“That may be true.” Colette settled back into her chair and sighed. “But that doesn’t make it right for you to neglect your own safety to protect me!”

“I know, I know.”

“Especially not for a silly game!”

She was right. Laser tag wasn’t exactly a matter of life and death. There was no urgent need for him to jump in front of her to protect her from a harmless beam of light. But he didn’t regret doing it…or rather, he wouldn’t regret it if he hadn’t completely failed to even block the laser and ended up looking like a complete fool.

Feeling like a little kid being lectured, he silently nodded.

“So please,” she said. “Don’t do things like that for my sake.”

He scratched an itchy spot on the side of his nose.

“It wasn’t just for your sake, though,” he admitted.

“Huh?”

“Well, me, um, you know, jumping in front of you like that was kind of for selfish reasons.”

“What do you mean?”

He could feel blood rushing to his face. He looked at his foot, avoiding eye contact with Colette.

“I kind of, um, did it because I wanted to look cool in front of you.”

She stood up, placing one hand on her hip and wagging the index finger of the other at him chidingly.

“Well, now I almost do want to call you an idiot!”

He blinked. Yeah, he’d humiliated himself, but he hadn’t been expecting Colette to respond so harshly.

“Hey, I know I failed miserably, but you don’t have to rub it in!”

“That’s not what I mean!” Her face softened, and this time her hand did end up meeting his shoulder. “Lloyd, you don’t have to do crazy things like that to look cool. I already think you’re cool!”

He blushed even harder.

“Y-you do?”

She grinned and nodded, her hair bouncing from the momentum.

“You’ve always been such a good friend to me! You were the only one who would hang out with me when we were kids. And you’ve saved my life for real a bunch of times! That makes you the coolest person in the world to me!”

He braved looking her in the eye. The light from the window behind her illuminated her head like a halo, and she almost seemed to sparkle. She really looked like an angel—not one of those Cruxis monstrosities, but the type of angel one heard about in fairy tales: the heavenly embodiment of pure-heartedness, flying down to the earth to give humanity solace in their times of need. No painkillers could compete with the healing powers of that smile.

He leaned over and rested his head on her shoulder, lighting her smile up even brighter as she gently stroked his hair.

“If I had to sprain my ankle for anyone,” he told her, “I’m glad it was you.”


End file.
